


and--

by theantepenultimateriddle



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: F/F, a compilation of little things that i wrote, they can't stand alone but they exist
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-20 22:08:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14270556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theantepenultimateriddle/pseuds/theantepenultimateriddle
Summary: A compilation of little stories that are too short to post on their own, or that I want to expand on but can't right now, etc.





	1. red handed

The crew of the Urania have body bags in their hold. Of course they do. It’s a relief, really, not having to look at her, because she’s shattered. Her expression is calm and broken and--

Lovelace deserved a happy ending.

Minkowski can’t stop thinking that, because Lovelace deserved more. She deserved a home, a family, happiness. Sometimes, before, Minkowski had thought she deserved it more than she herself did. Now she knows, but it’s too late, because Lovelace is destroyed and Eiffel is lost and Hilbert is gone and Maxwell died at her own hands and there’s no control any more. She’s lost it totally, if she ever had it. She’s useless. 

Minkowski zips the bag up over Lovelace’s head and goes to wash her hands. There’s blood on them, in more ways than one. 


	2. ice melting

She has eyes like flint and a tongue of gleaming metal and when she laughs the sparks burn your world of tinder to the ground, she the explosion in your life. 

She, captain, 

she, Lovelace,

she, Isabel,

she, your love your love your love your undoing. 

_ Touch me and set me aflame. _

Your world is icy and flaking rust and devoid of any sun and she comes into it like a wildfire, and you live for her warm body in your bed. A voice in you whispers,  _ is that all you needed, all you really wanted? The touch of a fever-hot hand?  _ but when she wakes up and looks at you there’s no doubt that you love her and not just her energy, not just her spark, and that she loves you, and not just the way you cool her and the balance you give her scales. She is hotheaded and you are cold and brittle like ice and there’s an equilibrium there that makes one functional person, one leader, two hearts two souls two minds the two of you entangled until you can’t tell where you end and she begins. Ouroboros. Infinity.

She dies and you die with her and she comes back and you live. She tells you that she can’t connect herself to Isabel Lovelace anymore despite her promise, and you say she’s the only Isabel Lovelace you’ve ever known and who cares about anything else? She’s crew. She’s your commanding officer, for now. She’s damn good at her job, and anything else is just semantics and people talking out of their asses. The time comes when everyone has to pick a side and you chose hers and you keep choosing because she did and does the same. Your side. Saved your life.

When you met her you said you heard her story and much later Lovelace said she was no fiction, just a woman, just a person, just like you.

You wish you could be like her.


	3. sweet dreams

And a dream…

Her eyes flutter open, and she is greeted by harsh fluorescence and stark metal and blood on nitrile gloves, hands strapping her down. Her blood, floating in bubbles through the microgravity, spreading and splattering. So much of it, she thinks, rehashing now what she thought then.  _ So much blood… _ The burning of pain is there, too, a grotesque memory of a monster ripping out her intestines, swallowing chunks of her guts, almost (but not quite) all-consuming. It’s only drowned out by the fear of the man holding the needle, preparing above her for sedation.

Dr. Hilbert’s blue eyes narrow, and she struggles against the pain and against unconsciousness and against the bright, bright lights burning her eyes--  _ turn the lights down,  _ she thinks, but maybe she said it out loud-- but it is utterly futile. The needle presses against her skin, and she spots a figure behind him, a woman with her hair in a braid and wide brown eyes and helplessness written into her expression. Lovelace’s hand spasms in the restraints as she tries to reach Minkowski, but the needle slides in and it all goes dark.

When she awakens again, she is confused and claustrophobic and stuck in a place that smells like death until hands above her reach in and unzip the body bag, letting her into the light and recycled air of the Hephaestus. Her head is spinning in wobbling circles like a drunken ballerina as her newly-reformed brain comes up with words,  _ floor ceiling friend spaceship star man woman,  _ so many words in a large and confusing world. 

There’s a man there with a friendly face, and a man who incites spitting hatred in her, who has done her a great rudeness and must face retribution. And there is another woman with her hair now cut short, her expression still concerned, tear tracks on her cheeks. The overload hits Lovelace like a punch to the jaw, knocks her out, and Minkowski’s arms catch her.

Awake now and it is a flash, so brief, where she is alone except for the man with taser and the pain and the electricity frying her body she is dying she is shutting down she is on—

_ Fire. Fire, surrounding her, fire burning, fire liquefying her, fire searing her to the core and vaporizing her in a microsecond she shouldn’t remember but can recall enough of to relive. The worst pain she has ever felt, and fire, and fire, and fire, and a woman’s silhouette, her hand closing on Lovelace’s arm. _

_ Her touch is cold. _

_ She is pulled from the flame and into the cradling arms, to a woman who hums a song she does not know to her and to icy hands on fevered skin, a touch that is cool and dry and soothes the pain.  _

_ Minkowski presses her lips to Lovelace’s forehead.  _

_ “It’s a dream, Captain. Time to wake up.” _


	4. someone gave me a tumblr prompt and i hate this so much so naturally i have to share it

The new girl at work is dressed business casual, mostly-- nice dark blue blouse, her long legs in dress slacks with sharp creases in them and her black hair drawn back into a sleek bun-- but there’s an incongruity somewhere in her outfit, and it takes a second for Lovelace to figure out what it is. She sweeps her eye up and down the woman’s form again as she watches her walk down the hall past her cubicle, raising an (empty) mug of coffee to her lips so she can pretend  _ not _ to be watching, and almost breaks the fragile illusion by laughing when she realizes. Her shoes. Instead of the almost-ubiquitous heels and/or ankle boots of office work, she’s wearing heavy-treaded work boots with bright-red laces. It’s totally out of place with the environment, and Lovelace (herself wearing turquoise sneakers because at this point a dress code infraction is the least they could fire her for) decides she likes this woman. What was her name again? Minnie? She’ll have to ask, later. 

Whoever she is, she’s stunning and practical and has a very interesting fashion sense, and those are the kind of things that Lovelace is drawn to like a moth to flame.

* * *

Lovelace watches the woman from afar for a while, and eventually she manages to sidle up next to her at the water cooler, filling a cup slowly and glancing up a few times. The woman is… staring at her, with dark, intense eyes. Lovelace straightens up, the water in her hand, and tries to calm the butterflies in her stomach as she meets her eyes. She smiles and presents her free hand to shake, hoping her palm isn’t sweaty. “Hey, I’m Lovelace.” 

The woman raises an eyebrow, but reaches out and shakes Lovelace’s hand, brief and firm. Her own hand is cold, her long delicate fingers holding her hand for a cool second that sends shivers down Lovelace’s spine for a moment or two after she’s released. “Nice to meet you, Lovelace. I’m Minkowski. Is there any particular reason you’ve been watching me for the past forty-five minutes?”

_ Minkowski.  _ That’s her name. Lovelace takes a deep breath and goes for a half-truth. “Kind of. I was admiring your boots.” Minkowski visibly relaxes at that, and Lovelace has a sudden realization that she thought Lovelace was watching her because she did something wrong. To try and dispel that notion completely, Lovelace goes for a compliment. “I like your shoelaces.”

_ Both _ of Minkowski’s eyebrows shoot up, but her expression otherwise stays totally bland as she answers, deadpan, “Thanks, I stole them from the president.” 

Her lips quirk up at the corners in a smile as she waits to see how Lovelace will react, and boy howdy, she is not disappointed. If Lovelace had been drinking the water in her cup, she would have done a spit-take, but she’s not, so instead she just makes a surprised choking noise because  _ oh my god.  _ She has to steady herself with an arm on the cooler, and Minkowski is full-on grinning now, watching her staggering in disbelief. She gives a little snort of laughter, and Lovelace can’t help it; she laughs, too. 

After a little bit, Lovelace manages to calm down enough to speak. She swigs water from her little paper cup, then lowers it to look at Minkowski. “One question: what in the hell was that?  _ Why _ would you bring that back, here and now?”

Minkowski shrugs. “I saw an opportunity and I took it. Can’t say I regret it, either.” She smiles at Lovelace again, and it physically feels warm on her body. “I think we’re going to work well together.”

Lovelace might already be falling for Minkowski, but that still reminds her of what she’s doing at Goddard-- what she’s  _ trying _ to do at Goddard. She sobers a little, then shrugs. “That depends.” Lovelace lifts her paper cup to her lips, drinks the last dregs of water, and sets it down. 

“Minkowski, how well do you work under pressure?”


End file.
